Brittany is 15 now!

The birthday girl, coming downstairs.

My posts are a little bit out of order, chronologically.  I should've posted this one back a week or so, but again, time got away from me.  This should catch me up, though.

On July 17th, Brittany turned 15.  I can't believe how time is flying.  We celebrated, as we usually do, with a family party.  Brit invited her boyfriend, Ramiro, and her best friend, Brenda over.  We had dinner, which was takeout Chinese food from Panda Express, at Brittany's request, followed by presents and cake.

Here is the cake.  As you may know by now, on most of our birthday cakes, we choose an ornament and decorate around them.  Brittany has had Tinkerbell cakes for many years now, and this year was no exception:

It's a little challenging to make a snow themed cake in July, but with a little imagination, it can be done.  It didn't help us feel any cooler, though!

Brittany, reading the card the 3 little girls "made" for her.  They got her 2 decks of playing cards, as replacements for 2 decks that were covered in spilled milk.  Look for  future post on cards.

The girls put stickers inside Brittany's card.  When they were done that, they decided to decorate Madison, too.

Katie used a couple on herself, as earrings.  I think, by the end of the night, all the females at the party had sticker earrings!

Ramiro and Madison, helping Brittany.

Opening the present Don and I got her:  $100 IOU towards a new cell phone, packaged with a toy phone.  Somehow, I think Madison would up with the toy.

Time for cake!  I got these relighting sparkler type candles.  We all thought they were funny...

....but Brittany wasn't quite as amused.  Ramiro and Brenda are looking on.

Finally, the candles are out, and it is time for cake and ice cream!

Happy 15th Birthday, Brittany!

Back to School!

Yesterday was the first day of school.  Hooray!  Two out of our six girls was excited about, two were not, one was crushed, and one didn't have a clue.  I know, it sounds crazy, doesn't it?  School starting in JULY??  I made the mistake, when we first got here, of calling it year round school, when in reality, it is called a modified traditional schedule.  Which, in my mind, translates to....year round.  The kids start in late July, have 2 weeks off in October, 3 weeks off in December, 2 weeks off in March, and then get out in early June.  They also still have the usual breaks: Labor Day, Veterans' Day, Thanksgiving, Spring Break.  So, they get the same amount of school days, but more frequent breaks.  As a mom, I love it!

Anyway, yesterday, Brianna became a high school junior, Brittany became a sophomore, and Abby and Emma joined the world of kindergarten.  We've been preparing for kindergarten for a few weeks now.  The girls helped me make their lunch bags:

They picked out the fabric, and helped me push the sewing machine "gas pedal".  Katie's is on the left, although she's not going for another year.  I have the fabric cut for a fourth one too, and will finish it soon.

Sunday night, I remembered that I hadn't made any kind of ID tags for them.  When Brianna started kindergarten, I made her some tags from Shrinky Dinks.  Remember them?  You draw and cut out special plastic, put them in the oven, and melt them down.  I happened to have some in the Craft Room (aka garage), so I made these:

This picture is before baking them.  Brittany came in and saw me, so she asked for a hippo, which is in the lower left corner.

Here they are, after baking and finishing:

Emma's,

Abby's,

and Katie's.

I like how they came out, and they were surprised the next morning.  I'm dreading the day they no longer think these kinds of things are cool!

My sister-in-law contacted us and told us that there is a German custom of giving the kids bouquets of flowers on the first day of school, and asked us to do that, from her.  Therry, here are cards I put on their bouquets:

And here are the girls, coming down for breakfast, and finding their flowers:

By this time, Brittany was ready for school.  Here is one of the few pictures I got of her.  You can see she is doing the typical high school girl thing:  texting her friends to see who's going to be there this early!

We managed to get a picture of Brianna and Madison too.  Brianna wasn't quite ready for school yet, and it's not a great picture, but it is getting increasingly difficult to get a camera into the same room as her!

Here are Abby and Emma, waiting to get into the car.  See how Abby's arm is around Emma?  That pretty much tells her their day went!

Katie, modeling her "back to school" outfit.

Waiting to go see the classroom.

Emma putting on her name tag.  See that folder?  That was 1/2 of MY homework last night.

Abby, putting on her name tag, and the other half of MY homework.

By the time we left, they were already poking around, finding out what is in a kindergarten classroom.  Don had to call them over to say goodbye to us!  They stuck pretty close to each other, but had no problem separating from us, which is a good thing.  OH!  I guess you can tell from the pictures, but they are in the same class, which kind of surprised us.  We had been told at registration that it was standard practice to split twins up.  I'm not sure why they didn't, but we had 2 of a very small group of kids that was not upset yesterday.  I think it helped that they had each other. 

After leaving them, Don and I went home.  Don took the day off, so while he stayed with Madison,

Katie and I dropped off Brianna.  Katie had a hard time with the fact that she didn't get to go to kindergarten too, so I took her to the local bagel shop, just the two of us.  I let her pick a doughnut (pink, green, and white sprinkles), and got her an apple juice.  A bagel with cream cheese and vanilla latte for me, and we were ready for our "breakfast date".  When we got home, I did my "homework", and then Katie and I worked in a numbers workbook until it was time to pick the girls up.

The report for the day was that school is fun.  Abby and Emma played on the playground together, and ate snack together.  They didn't make any new friends yesterday, but are going to soon.  They heard a story about a raccoon who was going to school, and then drew their hands, to leave with me, so I wouldn't miss them while they were gone each day.  Their teacher (Mrs. B.) gave them each a hand shaped cookie, to take home and share with someone they loved.  I think it's going to be a great year!  As for the older girls, they both got to school on time, some classes with some friends, although not enough friends in other classes.  Neither one of them had much to report, so I'll assume that's a good thing!

P.S.  Katie cried today, when we left the girls at school.  When we got home, I had her help me cook dinner:  Baked Penne with Meat Sauce.  Here are a couple pictures of her helping me.

Grinding pepper into the sauce.

Boy, this thing is loud!

Reading logs, science project and art project

Hi again!  Are you dazzled by the rapidness in which these posts are coming these days?  I'd like to say I can keep this up, but don't know that I can!

We are getting ready to go back to school!  Yep, school starts on July 26th, and this year, I have four kids going!  The twins start kindergarten this year, and they are looking forward to it.  I have to keep after Brianna and Brittany to not ruin it for them...they keep trying to tell them that school's not that fun.  Sigh.

Towards that end, we've been doing some prep this summer.  We practice writing our names the "kindergarten" way, which means a capital letter first, then lower cases letters.  I have wall charts showing letters and numbers.  I have a list on the refrigerator of words that they can read themselves.  And yes, I'm getting Katie in on it too. 

We've also visited the library a lot in the last 5 or 6 weeks.  The county library system sponsors summer reading programs for all ages, which I think I mentioned previously.  For adults, they read a book, write a review, and are entered into a drawing.  Babies Madison's age have 16 word play activities: picture books, nursery rhymes, clapping games, etc. in their program, and then receive a board book.  For kids ages 2 through 5th grade, they have a game board with 45 boats on them.  For every 20 minutes of reading/being read to, they mark off one boat.  After 23 boats, they get a halfway prize, after 45 boats, they get a big prize.

Last week, we went to the library.  Madison was finished her game, and received the board book "Hip Hippos".  Katie picked it out for her.  The other girls received their half way prizes:  a sticker, a ticket to the local space and science center, and a ticket for a free soft pretzel from Auntie Anne's.  I decided that to make it a little more special, I would take each girl separately for her pretzel, and that's what we did. 

For the first time EVER, I had one-on-one time with the 3 of them.  First Abby and I went.  She got her pretzel and I got pretzel sticks.  We shared a cheese dip and a cherry lemonade.  Next was Emma.  All was the same, except we shared a strawberry lemonade.  Finally was Katie, and we shared a blue raspberry lemonade.  It was wonderful.  (Well, not so much the lemonade...the fruit flavors made it too sweet!).  We tend to see these girls as a group, and it was really fun to get to see them as individuals, even for just a short time!  I hope to do more of that as we go on.

As of my writing this, we have 2 boats left!  And we still have some library books we haven't read yet.  Too date, we've read 71 different books, and some we've ready multiple times.  I've written them all down, as well as their authors and illustrators.  I'm not sure why, but it seems like a good idea, some how.

A few weeks ago, Don brought me home 2 bouquets of flowers.  As I always do when he brings home flowers, I cut the ends off and put them in vases.  As they always do, the girls asked me why I cut them.  So, I decided a science experiment was in order.  I bought white carnations, and divided them up into 5 bunches, one for Katie, one for Emma, one for Abby, one for Brittany, and one for me.  I let each girl choose a color, and we added food coloring to the water in some jelly jars.  I cut them stems, and we put them in.

Emma chose pink, Abby chose purple, Katie chose blue, Brittany chose red, and I left mine white, for comparison's sake.

By the end of the first night, Katie's flowers were turning blue:

It's slight, but you can definitely see it.  No one else's had done anything yet. 

Can you see the blue at the edges of the petals?

The experiment is over now, and although everyone else's flowers had the faintest tinges of color, Katie's blue was the most dramatic.  I wonder why?

And lastly, we did an art project.  Going to the beach right now is next to impossible.  The beach would not be fun for Maddie at this stage, and it is a 2 hour drive, one way, to a fairly decent beach.  So I decided we would make "permanent" sand castles, using a recipe I found in Family Fun magazine for sand clay.  Brittany mixed it up for us, and the ingredients are sand, cornstarch, powdered alum, and water.  Simple, right?  Brit says it smelled really bad!  We divided it into 3 chunks, and I gave the girls a bowl of mixed shells I bought at Michaels.

Here is Katie and her creation.

This one is Emma's.

And here is Abby's.

They aren't exactly castles, but they are really neat looking.  They did a much better job than I expected, and it kept them occupied for quite a while.  At the time that these pictures were taken, Abby and Emma were upstairs putting on their bathing suits.  Katie was ready, so she got to be in the pictures.  They were getting ready for a "Backyard Beach".  Basically, they play in their wading pool, run through the sprinklers, and play in the sandbox.  Works for them, works for me!

(There is a cartoon on the Disney Channel, called "Phineas and Ferb", which all of us kind of enjoy.  Phineas and Ferb are 2 boys on summer vacation, and they pull off all of these outlandish schemes and engineering wonders.  Their older sister, Candace, is always trying to bust them, only to have everything vanish before Mom can catch them.  In one episode, the boys build a beach in their back yard: beach, ocean, surfing, video arcade, the works.  Each episode has a really catchy song.  Check out "Backyard Beach"...it's been in my head all week!)

Talk to you soon!

Progress on the Fundraiser Basket, and some random dishcloths.

As you know, my mother in law asked me to put together a basket of items for a silent auction fundraiser.  Here is the progress on the basket items.

Do you ever make projects multiple times?  I do.  And usually, the first time through is kind of a prototype.  Subsequent times, I usually make a few changes.  Improvements, if you will.  This is unfortunate for the person that received the first attempt, but a plus for people later on.  Rita asked me to do a felted purse set, like the one I made her for Mother's Day, and neglected to take pictures of.  I did, but made a few improvements to the originals.  Here are the items before felting.

On the left is an eyeglass case.  A few days earlier, I had played around with some dishcloth yarn and learned an entrelac variation called garterlac.  I know this is like a foreign language from some of you, but entrelac is where you first knit a row of triangles (the light blue in the picture).  You rotate your work and pick up stitches along the sides and knit squares (the dark blue), then rotate again for the next row.  I decided to try it in a felted project, and the eyeglass case fit the bill. 

Next to that is a cell phone case, playing with some stranted color work.  The bottom shows a key finder, that attaches around your purse strap.  Your keys clip onto the ring at the bottom, so you can easily fish them up from the depths of your bag.  A clip will be included, but isn't shown in this picture.

On the right is a rectangle destined to be a small purse.  On the 2 previous versions, I had done a simple single crochet edge around the outside, then folded and stitched the purse together before felting.  I cut a button hole and stitched on a button, and called it done.  And it was, technically.  But I thought I could change that a little.  For this version, I simply felted the rectangle, and would finish it later.

Here are the felted pieces:

Cell phone holder, purse, eyeglass case, and key finder.  I really like how they came out, and hope that Rita will too.  But here are the changes on the purse.  On the other version, the seam was on the outside.  The whole thing was kind of loose and floppy, and the way the flap was, you couldn't really put anything small in there, for fear of it falling out.  This time, with the fabric inside out, I sewed the side seams, then turned it inside out.  Then, with a little trial and error (I'm not a sewer!), I achieved this:

This purse is fully lined, with a zipper closure.  There is a snap to keep the flap down, with a decorative button on the front.  I really like how the whole set came out, and hope Rita likes it too!

Still to come, the tea cozy, while finished.  I need to wash the teapot before I "dress" it and take pictures.  I have one slipper left to finish, and some soaps.  Then, I can assemble and show you the finished project.

Prayer Shawls and Pillow Cases

Do you remember the prayer shawl I started a while back?  This is what it looked like when I told you about it on June 24th:

At the time, it was just a random prayer shawl, a beginning to the prayer shawl ministry that the church was getting ready to start.  Very shortly after this picture was taken, I found out that a friend of mine had been diagnosed with cancer.  All of a sudden, this wasn't a random prayer shawl any more...now it was for April.  I finished it a week later, all 72 inches of it done, fringer attached, ready to head out the door.

But it hasn't left yet.  I couldn't decide on presentation.  I didn't want to wrap it...how do you choose wrapping paper for something like this?  It just felt wrong.  I definitely didn't want to put it in a grocery bag.  What to do?  Hold that thought.

I was looking in a quilting catalog, just browsing through it on the way to the recycling bin.  I rarely, if ever, order anything from them.  I'm not much of a sewer.  I want to be.  I try to be.  I delude myself into thinking I can be, or even am.  But, my sewing results speak for themselves, and I don't venture into that realm very often, so that catalog usually lands right in the trash.  This time was different.  I found a couple of kits that caught my eye. (More on them another time.)  I went online to order them, and was a few dollars short of the total needed for free shipping.  In their clearance section was a kit for "Magic Tube Pillow Cases".  It was cheap, so I bought it.  The day it arrived, I made the two cases.

Here they are.  They are made using a collection of fabric called "Cheep Talk" available from Connecting Threads, and feature birds.  They don't really match anyone's room, but will work in our room.  And the pattern was super easy.  I called my mom to tell her about it, thinking I'd stumbled on something revolutionary, but, it turns out that she already has several patterns for this.  Sigh.

Anyway, I really liked them, and sat thinking about them for a while, and then I Got An Idea!  The next day, I headed for the fabric store.  I found fabric in the perfect colors, then found the perfect ribbon.  Things were really coming together.  The following day, after washing, drying, and ironing my new purchase, the results were two pillow cases to match the prayer shawl:

I personally prefer using my own pillow when I am in the hospital, and that is just when I'm having babies.  April is having surgery next month, and I thought these pillow cases would be a nice touch.  And here's the bonus:

I wrapped one pillow case and the shawl inside the other pillow case.  Presentation issue solved!  Since these items are prayer items, and were prayed over as they were created, I couldn't have found a more perfect ribbon.  Now everything is ready to go.  I'll be calling April next week for a good time to drop by.

Darn it! Time got away from me again!

Does it feel like everytime I write a blog entry, I'm apologizing for how long it's been between posts?  Once again, I've been meaning to write an entry for quite a while.  When you see some of my pictures, you'll know how long I've wanted to do this!

So, this morning, I came up with a brilliant plan....I'd get up early, something that is not my strong point, and blog before the kids got up.  And now, here I am, at 6:15 am.  I am dressed, my morning grooming is done, my pictures are uploaded to the computer, and I'm ready to go.  That being said....the 3 little girls ALSO decided to get up early, and are now clustered in the office behind me.  Abby just told me that she has already poured dry cheerios for Maddie, and is making waffles for herself, Emma, and Katie!  Today might be a little bit of a scattered post.  Sigh.

Okay, first things first.  On July 4th, we drove down to Fremont to see the annual parade with Mom and Dick.  Here are the girls, all dressed in their patriotic best:

This is not a great picture for detail, but I had a little fun the night before.  I went to the drug store and bought red, white, and blue nail polish, plus 2 glitter colors, and some star  nail stickers.  Every girl's fingers and toes got painted, and then coated with glitter polish, so we had "fireworks" on our nails, mine and Maddie's included.  Mom found them patriotic flip flops, and the girls' light up when they walk.

(Side note:  Abby is behind me, "reading" to her sisters.  We checked "My Father's Dragon", by Ruth Stiles Gannett, out of the library the last time.  There are 10 chapters, and we read 2 a night, finishing last night.  Abby is doing a fairly accurate retelling!)

Here is a picture of Maddie:

For  rare moment, she was let out of the stroller to roam.  Doesn't look like she quite knows what's going on, does she?

Our group really wasn't that big, but I never got a shot of all of us at one time. Here are Dick and Mom, waiting with the girls for the parade to start.  Brianna and Brittany didn't join us this time, as both had other plans.

And here are Mom, Madison, and Don:

(Now the girls are playing games.  Katie is playing a cookie matching game, and Abby and Emma are playing Barrel of Monkeys.  Abby and Emma are quite noisy!)

I guess the parade wasn't exciting enough to hold Maddie's attention!  Poor baby, it was hot, we  sat in the sun, and she had gotten up earlier than normal.  But she didn't fuss at all, just let herself drift off.  We are sooooooo lucky!

This float was toward the end of the parade.  Correct that, second from the end.  The truck right behind it is a street sweeper.  I took over 100 pictures, as I do every year.  This parade has been going for about 12 years or so, and we haven't missed one yet.  There is the usual mix of bands, scout troops, classic cars, fire trucks, and police cars participating, but we also have groups of pirates, gunfighters, witches, Highland warriors, and nuns marching, to name a few!

(Now the girls are "cooking" an odd assortment of cookies and moneys.  I won't ask, I don't want to know!)

After the parade, we went back to Mom's house for a barbecue.  The girls got to play, the baby got to nap, (as did Don, for a few minutes!), and I got to relax a little.  Mom and I worked together on the food, Dick manned the grill, and everyone ate their fill.  I think that is one of my favorite parts:  just getting together, keeping it low key, and relaxing!

It's now 6:42, and the girls are getting impatient, so I guess I'd better go, but more to follow soon!